People who bought this also bought...

Jane Eyre

Following Jane from her childhood as an orphan in Northern England through her experience as a governess at Thornfield Hall, Charlotte Brontë's Gothic classic is an early exploration of women's independence in the mid-19th century and the pervasive societal challenges women had to endure. At Thornfield, Jane meets the complex and mysterious Mr. Rochester, with whom she shares a complicated relationship that ultimately forces her to reconcile the conflicting passions of romantic love and religious piety.

The Brothers Karamazov

The Brothers Karamazov tells the stirring tale of four brothers: the pleasure-seeking, impatient Dmitri; the brilliant and morose Ivan; the gentle, loving, and honest Alyosha; and the illegitimate Smerdyakov: shy, silent, and cruel. The four unite in the murder of one of literature's most despicable characters - their father. This was Dostoevsky's final and best work.

A Day's Read

Join three literary scholars and award-winning professors as they introduce you to dozens of short masterpieces that you can finish - and engage with - in a day or less. Perfect for people with busy lives who still want to discover-or rediscover-just how transformative an act of reading can be, these 36 lectures range from short stories of fewer than 10 pages to novellas and novels of around 200 pages. Despite their short length, these works are powerful examinations of the same subjects and themes that longer "great books" discuss.

White Fang

In the desolate, frozen northwest of Canada, a lone wolf fights a heroic daily fight for life in the wild. But after he is captured and cruelly abused by men, he becomes a force of pure rage. Only one man sees inside the killer to his intelligence and nobility. But can his kindness touch White Fang?

All Quiet on the Western Front

Paul Bäumer is just 19 years old when he and his classmates enlist. They are Germany’s Iron Youth who enter the war with high ideals and leave it disillusioned or dead. As Paul struggles with the realities of the man he has become, and the world to which he must return, he is led like a ghost of his former self into the war’s final hours. All Quiet is one of the greatest war novels of all time, an eloquent expression of the futility, hopelessness and irreparable losses of war.

The Pickwick Papers

The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (commonly known as The Pickwick Papers) is the first novel by Charles Dickens. The book became the first real publishing phenomenon, with bootleg copies, theatrical performances, Sam Weller joke books and other merchandise.

Breakfast of Champions

Breakfast of Champions (1973) provides frantic, scattershot satire and a collage of Vonnegut's obsessions. His recurring cast of characters and American landscape was perhaps the most controversial of his canon; it was felt by many at the time to be a disappointing successor to Slaughterhouse-Five, which had made Vonnegut's literary reputation.

The Jungle Book I & II

Tales of Mowgli, the boy raised by animals in the exotic jungles of India; Rikkitikkitavi, a courageous young mongoose who battles the sinister black cobra Nag; Toomai, the boy who works with elephants; and more will delight listeners both young and old. These classic stories brim with adventure and thrills as the lively characters fend off ferocious tigers and deadly snakes, slip through the jungle to watch elephants dance, and seek refuge from dangerous hunters.

Cujo

Cujo is a 200-pound Saint Bernard, the best friend Brett Camber has ever had. One day Cujo chases a rabbit into a cave inhabited by sick bats. What happens to Cujo, how he becomes a horrifying vortex inescapably drawing in all the people around him, makes for one of the most heart-stopping novels Stephen King has ever written.

Light in August

An Oprah's Book Club Selection regarded as one of Faulkner's greatest and most accessible novels, Light in August is a timeless and riveting story of determination, tragedy, and hope. In Faulkner's iconic Yoknapatawpha County, race, sex, and religion collide around three memorable characters searching desperately for human connection and their own identities.

The Good Earth

This Pulitzer Prize-winning classic tells the poignant tale of a Chinese farmer and his family in old agrarian China. The humble Wang Lung glories in the soil he works, nurturing the land as it nurtures him and his family. Nearby, the nobles of the House of Hwang consider themselves above the land and its workers; but they will soon meet their own downfall. The working people riot, breaking into the homes of the rich and forcing them to flee. When Wang Lung shows mercy to one noble and is rewarded, he begins to rise in the world, even as the House of Hwang falls.

A Tale of Two Cities [Tantor]

A Tale of Two Cities is one of Charles Dickens's most exciting novels. Set against the backdrop of the French Revolution, it tells the story of a family threatened by the terrible events of the past. Doctor Manette was wrongly imprisoned in the Bastille for 18 years without trial by the aristocratic authorities.

The Enlightenment: And Why It Still Matters

One of our most renowned and brilliant historians takes a fresh look at the revolutionary intellectual movement that laid the foundation for the modern world. Liberty and equality. Human rights. Freedom of thought and expression. Belief in reason and progress. The value of scientific inquiry. These are just some of the ideas that were conceived and developed during the Enlightenment, and which changed forever the intellectual landscape of the Western world.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: The Chronicles of Narnia

Lucy is the first to find the secret of the wardrobe in the professor's mysterious old house. At first her brothers and sister don't believe her when she tells of her visit to the land of Narnia. But soon Edmund, then Peter and Susan step through the wardrobe themselves. In Narnia they find a country buried under the evil enchantment of the White Witch.

John Quincy Adams

He fought for Washington, served with Lincoln, witnessed Bunker Hill, and sounded the clarion against slavery on the eve of the Civil War. He negotiated an end to the War of 1812, engineered the annexation of Florida, and won the Supreme Court decision that freed the African captives of La Amistad. He served his nation as minister to six countries, secretary of state, senator, congressman, and president. John Quincy Adams was all of these things and more. In this masterful biography, award-winning author Harlow Giles Unger reveals Adams as a towering figure in the nation’s formative years.

The Turn of the Screw

Academy Award, Golden Globe, and Emmy winner Emma Thompson lends her immense talent and experienced voice to Henry James' Gothic ghost tale, The Turn of the Screw. When a governess is hired to care for two children at a British country estate, she begins to sense an otherworldly presence around the grounds. Are they really ghosts she's seeing? Or is something far more sinister at work?

2001: A Space Odyssey

It has been 40 years since the publication of this classic science-fiction novel that changed the way we look at the stars and ourselves. From the savannas of Africa at the dawn of mankind to the rings of Saturn as man adventures to the outer rim of our solar system, 2001: A Space Odyssey is a journey unlike any other.

Lincoln

In the best-selling tradition of Truman, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer David Herbert Donald offers a new classic in American history and biography - a masterly account of how one man's extraordinary political acumen steered the Union to victory in the Civil War, and of how his soaring rhetoric gave meaning to that agonizing struggle for nationhood and equality.

Neverwhere

Richard Mayhew is an unassuming young businessman living in London, with a dull job and a pretty but shrewish fiancée. Then one night he stumbles upon a girl lying on the sidewalk, bleeding. He stops to help her, and his life is changed forever. Soon he finds himself living in a London most people would never have dreamed of: a city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels. It is a world that exists entirely in a subterranean labyrinth of sewer canals and abandoned subway stations.

Atlas Shrugged

This is the story of a man who said that he would stop the motor of the world - and did. Is he a destroyer or a liberator? Why does he fight his hardest battle not against his enemies, but against the woman he loves? Tremendous in scope, breathtaking in its suspense, Atlas Shrugged is Ayn Rand's magnum opus and launched an ideology and a movement. With the publication of this work in 1957, Rand gained an instant following and became a phenomenon. Atlas Shrugged emerged as a premier moral apologia for capitalism, a defense that had an electrifying effect on millions of readers (and now listeners) who had never heard capitalism defended in other than technical terms.

My Man Jeeves

A new Jeeves audiobook is cause for celebration, especially when the stories are not available in print. This hilarious installment of the inimitable manservant Jeeves and his twit of an employer, Bertie Wooster, includes the earliest stories written by the master of the pen, prank, and pun. The stories are woven together with original material performed by Martin Jarvis.

The Hobbit

Like every other hobbit, Bilbo Baggins likes nothing better than a quiet evening in his snug hole in the ground, dining on a sumptuous dinner in front of a fire. But when a wandering wizard captivates him with tales of the unknown, Bilbo becomes restless. Soon he joins the wizard’s band of homeless dwarves in search of giant spiders, savage wolves, and other dangers. Bilbo quickly tires of the quest for adventure and longs for the security of his familiar home. But before he can return to his life of comfort, he must face the greatest threat of all.

I Am Legend

In I Am Legend, a plague has decimated the world, and those unfortunate enough to survive are transformed into blood-thirsty creatures of the night. Robert Neville is the last living man on earth. Everyone else has become a vampire, and they are all hungry for Neville's blood. By day, he stalks the sleeping undead, by night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for the dawn.

The Phantom of the Opera

The story begins with an investigation into some strange reports of an "opera ghost", legendary for making the great Paris opera performers ill-at-ease when they sit alone in their dressing rooms. Some allege to have seen the ghost in evening clothes moving about in the shadows. Nothing is done, however, until the disappearance of Christine during her triumphant performance.

Audible Editor Reviews

Scandalous when first published due to its homoerotic overtones and laissez faire attitude towards sexual pleasure, The Picture of Dorian Gray is legendary Irish writer Oscar Wilde’s classic literary comment on hedonism and the youthful pursuits of desire.

Narrated with artfully restrained passion by Alec Sand, the listener is captivated by this strange and wonderful story concerning a beautiful young man, Dorian Gray, who sells his soul so that he will never age in order to pursue the passions of the flesh while at the height of his stunning physical prowess.

Publisher's Summary

A young man commits all types of sin, but only his portrait shows the ravages of his life. Oscar Wilde’s Faustian classic. Gothic horror at it's best.

I'd have been more impressed when I was younger, but somehow this escaped me and I'd never read it. Of course, I knew basically what is was all about. Now it seems awfully contrived--interesting as a moral tale but not so much as a novel. What I liked best: the wonderfully witty dialog. What I like least: the narrator. He hadn't a clue how to pronounce anything English--names of people and places were wrong and the pacing was off too.

The book itself? Yes. Wilde is brilliant. He incorporates philosophical dimensions of hedonism, narcissism and egoism into a creepy gothic tale.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Not really relevant...the characters are multi-dimensional and interesting, but none are really likeable.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

In every way. Sand sounds like an adolescent who barely comprehends the words that he speaks. He murmurs and drops sentences. His flat midwestern accent is ridiculous for this work, especially when he is portraying the group of Brits sitting around discussing Americans.

He pronounces the word "extraordinary" as "extra-ordinary." Over and over. He sounds like a disinterested junior high student forced to read aloud from a textbook. One of the most ironic moments of the audiobook is when he describes Sybil's dreadful performance in her acting: He describes the horror of listening to the character's flat, artificial dead tones in her portrayal of a Shakespearian character. Meanwhile, we have to listen to the artificial, dead, artless, heartless performance of this classic work.

Sand's narrarion is hard to understand. He drops his voice at the end of sentences, so that the listener can hardly hear them.. He barely seems to understand the words that he reads. All of the characters have the same voice. At times, it seems that Sand can barely get through the text. He has a disinterested, squeaky, adolescent voice that has no chance of doing this work justice

This classic work deserves much better than this performance. Do not buy this edition of the audiobook.

I could not listen for more than 5 minutes to this wonderful book being blasphemed by an American accent. It totally ruined it for me. What an insult to Oscar Wilde, one of my favorites. Thank goodness I have the book in print because I cannot bear to listen to a British classic being read in a non-Brit accent. Horrifyingly disappointing. Do not make the same mistake.

This is a very thought provoking story with a very unique premise. I am sure books have been written on how to interpret this story. For me, it was an exercise in coming face to face with one's own reality. It is a morality on just how far a person who is apparently good and pure can sink. It is also an exercise on how someone can hope to change and do better. There comes a point, however, when there is no return. The more I think about this story, the more I like it. There have been times in my own life when I have not wanted to look at myself for what I really am. Maybe we all should have a Dorian Gray type painting of ourselves that we are forced to see every day that could help us judge the direction of our own lives, although it didn't much help Dorian.

The narrations was adequate, and, although it started out rather dull, seemed to improve as the book progressed.

Wilde's infamous novel about the life of Dorian Gray brings to the forefront of the mind the folly of vanity and the destructiveness of narcissism. Despite a bit of a dip in the middle and at times a fast paced audio, this audiobook brings alive the main characters and enabled me to experience for the first time why Wilde is a renowned as a legend of the written word.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Report Inappropriate Content

If you find this review inappropriate and think it should be removed from our site, let us know. This report will be reviewed by Audible and we will take appropriate action.